POTSDAM: Germany's far-right AfD was hoping to win a tight race on Sunday against Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats in a regional election in the state of Brandenburg that could have repercussions for the government in Berlin. The anti-immigration Alternative for Germany has long railed against Scholz's unpopular coalition government, which faces national elections in a year.
In the state election in Brandenburg in former communist East Germany, the AfD aims to replicate the strong gains it made in the east three weeks ago, when it won a parliamentary vote in Thuringia and came a close second in Saxony. A victory in Brandenburg, which surrounds the capital Berlin, would deliver another setback to Scholz's Social Democrats (SPD), the centre-left party that has ruled the state since Germany's reunification in 1990.
The latest surveys give the AfD an edge, predicting it will win with 27-29 percent of the vote, even as the SPD has recently narrowed the gap and polled at 25-26 percent.
"If the SPD does not come out on top in the elections, it will be a very hard blow for the Social Democrats and Scholz," said Benjamin Hoehne, a political scientist at the Technical University of Chemnitz.
A bruising defeat would mean "the debate about who in the SPD would be the best candidate for chancellor is likely to accelerate", Hoehne added.
Infighting in the government has seen Scholz's approval ratings take a dive while his defence minister, fellow Social Democrat Boris Pistorius, often tops surveys as Germany's most popular politician. In the long run-up to national elections in September 2025, the opposition conservatives of the CDU-CSU alliance last week selected their party leader Friedrich Merz as their top candidate.
Around 2.2 million people aged over 16 are eligible to vote in Brandenburg. The state includes wealthy towns such as Potsdam as well as thinly populated rural areas and industrial zones, one of which houses a Tesla plant. Popular SPD state premier Dietmar Woidke has kept his distance during the campaign from his party colleague Scholz, even though the chancellor's electoral district is Potsdam. — AFP
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